Turkey surrounded by terrorism

By Manolis Kostidis /
09/01/2017 /
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The Republic of Turkey is faced with of the most difficult periods since its establishment in 1923, with the country facing multiple threats and attacks and the Turkish government seeing enemies everywhere, resulting in thousands of arrests and prosecutions of Turkish citizens.

The President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan went so far as to call the people to mobilization and stated that “Turkey launches a new liberation struggle”, similar to that of Kemal Atatürk. In this case however, it is not clear who the enemy is, so in Turkey they refer to all terrorist organizations that have made 34 terrorist attacks within 1.5 years. The pro-government media speak of “foreign forces”, “foreign centers” that have targeted Erdogan, while the government accuses the US of arming the Kurds of northern Syria.

How Turkey became a target of terrorist organizations

The situation that Turkey is in, suffering terrorist attacks from Kurds, jihadists and having been faced with an attempted coup, raise many questions.

The president of the main opposition Kemal Kılıçdaroglu directly accused the government of supporting the jihadists! “You sent weapons to Syria and now all of these are in Turkey. You provided care in public hospitals to those who got injured. You have channels of communication with Al Nusra”, he said.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) accuses Erdogan of violating the basic principle of the Turkish Republic of not getting involved in the internal affairs of another country.

With the outbreak of the fighting in Syria Ankara provided support to opposition forces, since the aim was the overthrow of Bashar al-Asad. “In a few months we will pray together with our brothers in Aleppo”, had declared the former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Despite his defeats, Asad has remained in power and with the help of Russia Aleppo is once again under the control of government forces.

In order to prevent the creation of a single Kurdish zone in northern Syria Turkey has invaded Syria and began to fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which controls the city Al Bab. In order to do this however, it came to an agreement with Moscow and Tehran, cutting all aid to the Syrian opposition forces. As a result, the militants fighting Asad believe they were “betrayed” by Erdogan who supported them until the agreement with Putin.

“In the Turkish government there is the assessment that the New Year’s hit is the work of the core of the Islamic State located in Turkey. The Islamic State, with the pressure of the Turkish army, has been removed and its members cannot cross the border any more. At the same time, the US has been left out of the game in Syria. Aleppo was evacuated after the Russia-Turkey cooperation. The truce was reached again in the same manner. The US has been left out. It is estimated that the terrorist attacks of the PKK in Kayseri and Beşiktaş, the murder of the Russian ambassador from the terrorist organization FETÖ and the attack at the night club Reina are not unrelated to developments”, says Abdülkadir Selvi in an article in the newspaper Hürriyet.

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Essentially, the columnist levels many accusations for these terrorist attacks to the US, without of course documenting them.

The Turkish government will try to take advantage of Trump’s election to change Washington’s policy in relation to the Kurds, but also the issue of Gulen. Besides, the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim clarified that “the US should not cooperate with terrorist organizations, but work with Turkey that is fighting them. If they do not change policy however, we will proceed alone. The US must stop this absurdity”, stressed the Turkish Prime Minister.

Political analysts say that an unorthodox alliance between Moscow, Ankara and Tehran has been created, which changes the balances in the Middle East. Questions remain as to the position of countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and of course the US.

The Muslim brothers and Erdogan

The thing that troubles many people in Turkey is the support from part of the public opinion in the country to the Islamic State for its attacks. “There was a turmoil within the ruling AKP party, with the thought that some in Turkey, perhaps the taxi driver, the greengrocer, support passionately these terrorist attacks. Indeed, opinion polls had shown that 8% of Turks was sympathetic towards the Islamic State when it published a video beheading people”, writes Murat Yetkin in Hurriyet.

“The theoretical minds of Ankara, when they were estimating the situation in Syria in 2013, saw only the Muslim Brotherhood and believed they would overthrow Assad. They failed to see how the Muslim Brotherhood dissolved in Syria when they were overthrown with a coup in Egypt. They did not realize they all these joined Al Nusra and the Islamic State. Ankara did not see this”, adds the experienced political analyst of the Turkish newspaper.

However, analysts say that the old policy of Turkey in Syria ended November 24, 2015, with the shooting down of the Russian warplane. And the new policy in Syria began after the normalization of relations with Israel and Russia in July 2016.

“Despite the threats, Ankara did not consider the Islamic State as an important threat as they did the PKK and the FETO terrorist organisation. After January 1, Ankara considers the Islamic State as big a threat as the other terrorist organizations”, Turkish analysts say./IBNA